The problem with Michael Bay as a director

The problem with Michael Bay as a director

Earlier today there was a post uploaded to this blog which discussed the issues that Simon West has a director and how there are some issues with his filmmaking and his directing style. The article criticised West for many different things such as his editing and camerawork, however West is not the only director that has issues with his directing and filmmaking. There is a filmmaker which is worse than West and that would be Michael Bay, many people like the films that Michael Bay makes, but his films are not exactly received well by most critics. Bay has made such films as The Rock, Pearl Harbour and his most popular films being the Transformers films. The question remains why are the films that Michael Bay directs and produces received negatively with the critics. This article will discuss the problems with Michael Bay as a director, and address the issues that the critics have with the films that Michael Bay makes.

Characters

Michael Bay is known for many different films such as The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbour and the Transformers series as well as both of the Bad Boys films. There are many aspects to discuss about his films, the first aspect is the characters that are featured in his films. Bay seems to make films that show spectacle of the action sequences while have characters which are one dimensional and not very well written characters, this is something which Bay has done in many films an example would be Transformers from 2007. The film tries to show these action sequences in the film which focus more on the special effects and explosions rather than expanding the characters. Take any great action film, something like The Raid 2 comes to mind, the action sequences here are important to the audience because the audience has come to sympathise with the character of Rama and the audience wants him to survive for various different reasons, such as he has a child which he has never seen and this is why the audience supports him. In the first Transformers film that Bay directed the characters are not given much development from the action, there are no character traits and easy ways to sympathise with the characters in Bay’s films. An example would be Sam Witwicky in this film, all the audience understands is that the character is in school and that he can be quite annoying at times, but there is nothing shown to the audience that makes them care and understand the character. The second aspect of the characters which Bay often does in his films is that he sexualises the female characters a lot more than most other directors. This is done through the costume choice that has given to the actresses and also the choice of framing that Bay uses, but Bay also decides to use slow motion and this is not done in all of his films but it does in most of them. The characters are quite one dimensional in Bay’s films they are developed and there is no reason to understand them, and the female characters are sexualised too much and not developed so that the audience can understand them.

Camerawork and framing

Camerawork and Framing are quite a negative aspect of his directing, for this point to be discussed properly there needs to be some examples, some example would be Bad Boys II, Transformers, Pain and Gain and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. These are films which were received quite poorly by the critics but were very successful at the Box office. Bay uses Camerawork which makes the action hard to follow, in Bad Boys II Bay uses camerawork makes the action hard to follow the camerawork makes it impossible to see what is going on in frame. An example would be the final car chase in this film, the camerawork is making harder to understand the character’s action because the camera is shaking all over the place and this is something which is done in most of his action sequences that don’t involve CGI. This is something which is done in the first action scene in Transformers the camerawork makes it hard to follow what the characters are doing during these scenes. Another example would be in the final action scene in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the action that doesn’t involve CGI is quite hard to actually understand the action of each character because of the camerawork. The other aspect would be the framing choices that he uses, during the scenes that there is no action there has to be some form of motion that takes place. An example would be his camera is always moving, his famous low angle circle camera move this is something which has motion during the scene, with the actor, and the background moving and this the form of motion that he uses and he add layers to make it difficult to follow. Something which is a great example would be the emotional sequence that Bay does in Pain and Gain with Ed Harris is talking about other characters in the film which have broken the law. The scale makes the characters seem very small in the environment when the characters are meant to be the main focus within the scene. This is something which Bay does a lot during his films and this is an aspect of his films which most of the critics have noticed, someone who explains this in great detail would the YouTube channel Every Frame a painting who explains the Bayhem format in great detail, however this is not the only thing that is wrong with Bay as a director because something which is quite poor is Bay’s action sequences.

Action Sequences

One of the biggest issues that Michael Bay has with his directing style would be his action sequences, there are two main issues that the action sequences, the one issue has been addressed with the point of his camerawork. The second issue comes when understanding his action sequences, because of the camerawork and his directing style, the action sequences are very difficult to follow, the problem is that the action sequences come from nowhere and instead of establishing the geography and making the action clear, Bay just decides to make an action sequence appear and this means that the without proper establishment when making an action sequence means that the action is hard to follow. Where a director like the late Tony Scott would take time to film an action sequence, while both directors have a similar style especially late era Scott, the action is done to make it easy to follow. But for some reason Bay is director that doesn’t seem to understand that if you make an action film there needs to be care and effort taken to make sure that the action is easy to follow. Alongside the action being hard to follow the editing is also something that contributes to the action being difficult to follow and this is because Bay seems to think that any camera angle will fit during the action and then cut to another angle which shows the action even more than the previous. Overall the action is difficult to follow and Bay should take more time and effort but Bay won’t do that because of another aspect which is a problem with his films and that would be…

Lazy filmmaking

Michael bay is above all a very lazy filmmaker, the reason why Bay is a lazy filmmaker would be because of one reason. This reason would be that he uses the same shots more than once, a brilliant director shows you different visuals each time and this means that when the audience watches the film they see something different. Bay seems to use some shot more than once, an example would be Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, in this film he uses the same footage in two different scenes but also takes footage from the previous film in the franchise. But during the highway chase in Revenge of the Fallen the footage has either been filmed to like it has been taken from Bad Boys II or this is exact footage with added CGI with the Transformer are just added into the sequence but regardless this is the same footage that has been used in other films that he has made. Bay is lazy director for this reason and this is because of this and this means that if he lazy for using the same footage more than once and this should make the audience understand that if he is lazy director then Bay is not going to pay particular attention to making an action sequence.

Conclusion

Bay is not the worst director that is making films at the current time, but he is the worst director who has had the most success and for some reason people rush to go and see his films and this is because of the marketing of his films because of the budget size. Bay does do one aspect of his films very well and this would be that he understands how to incorporates CGI into his films. The CGI is done to a very high standard and this is something which he excels in compared to other directors. Bay is a director that could make decent films but he chooses to make films that are poor in quality and that is shame because he is a director that has potential. However, Bay is such a big influence with his filmmaking style that other directors have started to copy him and his style. This is something which needs to stop because there should be better films that are given to the audiences because the audiences are the people who pay for the films.